Can I avoid having ugly pylons near my French home?

Reader Question: We have a second home in the countryside and fibre is being installed along our road. The cable will be underground for the first few hundred metres, before being suspended between ugly pylon-type posts on the stretch up to our house. Our mayor tells us we have no choice in the matter. Is that true?

Installation of fibre in France is reaching the final isolated houses in rural areas, but it is not a simple process.

There are two bodies involved – the network operators, who install the physical cables, and the commercial operators, who sell you the ‘box’ and services to make the system work.

In a few areas they are the same – usually Orange. Even here, however, Orange usually sub-contracts the work.

If you do not mind doing the work yourself, you could, in theory, dig a trench in your property a metre deep from your house to the nearest network connection point. Then lay a conduit and necessary inspection boxes, and have the cable run to the house that way.

However, you will have to pay for it.

Or, if your existing fixed line copper cable is already buried, it might be possible to use the same trench and conduit for the fibre optic cable.

Organisations we spoke to suggested first talking to your favourite commercial operator about what you want, and asking them to approach the network operator, rather than approaching the network operator yourself.

However, they warned establishing an entirely new telecoms infrastructure is complicated, and there might be technical reasons why the operators have decided using posts is the only option to reach your house.

Read more: Village near Nice fights ‘Wild West’ spread of 5G internet masts